Oh, the dear Enderle! I just can’t get enough of the man! I wonder if the rest of the analysts at the Enderle Group is as funny as their principal? Why do we never hear more from them? Are they lving in the shadow of their great leader? Come forward, ye lesser Enderles! I am sure you too will have a lot of fun to share with the world!

Dvorak at least came clean about what really drives this braindead pundit industry:

1. piss of Mac fans
2. expect a link storm on the Mac web
3. profit

Pageviews are a prankster’s best friend. If only there were a mechanism for reverse charges! Come on, how many angry Mac users have ever clicked an ad while in flame mode and followed through with a sale for anything? It’s a system being abused.

In other news, Leopard is expected to be slipped by another year, because some putz writing for a clueless editor at a trade rag said that Apple was having great difficulty making Leopard compatible with IBM’s OS/360 operating system.

Apparently, they’re having considerable trouble locating a nine-track tape reader, not to mention locating tapes that have survived since the mid-1970’s. Scores of Chinese workers are reportedly gluing flakes of tape emulsion to new strips of kevlar to ensure a bullet-proof copy.

Asked to identify his sources, the idiot admitted under intense questioning to having pulled it out of his ass.

Actually, another thought occurs to me in response to Quix’s amusing post.

“… waving the rainbow Windows flag …”

Isn’t Microsoft’s branding sadly out of date? Not only are they still using the name “Windows”–it’s not Microsoft Vista; it’s Windows Vista–but they are still using a multicoloured logo, like Apple _used_ to:

Not only that, Microsoft has even extended the “Windows” brand into web apps–“Windows Live”. Not “Microsoft Live” but “Windows Live”.

Oh, look a search engine that runs in a window!

I’m being slightly literal here: there are companies that have brand names that relate not just to now-universal but to actually out-of-date technologies–and none the worse for that. Still, it’s borderline ridiculous to appear to be making a point that’s no longer relevant.

The Vista logo looks ridiculous–a poor rip-off of an aqua icon with four little coloured windows floating in it:

I wonder how much they paid for that. Can you imagine Steve Jobs letting through something like that? But Bill Gates has so little sense for what looks right his wife probably chooses his ties for him.

Microsoft’s problems are far deeper than branding or logos, but somehow even the details are indicative.

Nick, they cling on to “Windows” because it’s something of a lucky charm for them. (No laughing now.) The word Microsoft raises even non-Mac people’s hackles, and forking out a big wad of your own money just for the world’s most notoriously cash-flush company works wonders for putting customers off at the last hurdle. It’s just not something MS want or feel they need.

That’s the great thing about “may.” You can always say later: “Well, we did say ‘may’, rather than ‘for sure’, so don’t give us a hard time!

The great thing about “may” is that it lets you publish pretty much whatever you want without being held responsible. In the giant hall of mirrors that is the tech news industry, you can simply say that you were just going with “published reports,” which is just another way of saying, “Analyst A thinks the launch will delayed, and Analyst B agrees.”

Thus one man’s opinion becomes the hive opinion in the blink of an eye, and the mainstream tech press rolls blithely along.

To be fair to Enderle, I suspect he meant that Apple shouldn’t sacrifice second half sales with an imperfect product just because they want to race to get it released in the first half of the year (i.e. the spring) which is “a slow time for PCs anyway.”

You know, just to be fair.

He’s effectively saying the delay won’t hurt Apple if it wins them more second half sales. Of course, October doesn’t quite cut it if you’re aiming for the second half back-to-school market… So, hmm. Maybe I see the Macalope’s point after all.